Ragnarok Rising: The Awakening (Book One of The Ragnarok Rising Saga) (49 page)

“Cease fire!” I yelled, knowing it was already too late.

The gate was finished and there wasn’t anything we were going to be able to do about it. The control equipment was a smoking ruin. The gate was going to have to be opened and closed manually, if at all. I drew my pistol and put headshots into the ones that were still twitching, and then turned to look at Southard with a raised eyebrow.

“Aw, shit,” he stammered. “Sorry about that.”

“I’d rather lose the gate than one of us,” I said. “You did the right thing.”

That didn’t seem to make him any happier, but he accepted it with a nod.
I turned to the Humvees and motioned for them to stay inside. Spec-4 approached me shaking her head.

“Sorry, Wylie,” she said.
“I changed uniforms after my shower and didn’t put extra magazines in my cargo pocket.”

“Just don’t let it happen, again,” I said, smiling and tossing her one from my cargo pocket.

Without a word, she changed out the magazine. When she was ready, she nodded at me. Then we moved towards the Humvees to clear them before anyone got out. It was possible to have one or two
Crawlers
clinging to the undercarriage. Once we were satisfied that they were clear, I gave them the thumbs up. Then they all piled out, looking a little worse for wear. Right about then Medical came running out of the Release doors to check everyone. Sheriff Daniels came over to me, looking worn and haggard.

“Is that what it’s like every time you go out?” he asked.

“Pretty much,” I said. “Every outing is bad. Some are worse than others.”

He looked at me with a grim look in his eyes and nodded.

“And you keep going back out there?”

“Someone has to,” I said, softly.

Daniels patted me on the shoulder and headed for the Release doors. Spec-4 and I went back to loading our own Humvee. Southard reloaded the SAW and climbed inside, shutting the turret behind him. I stood next to the driver’s door and checked my go-bag. I had my Mossberg lying on top and the MP-5 tucked inside. It was loaded with ammo.

“Here,” said Southard, handing me one of the AA-12’s.

I nodded in appreciation and hefted it. Then I grabbed my trusty Mossberg and tossed it to him.

“Stow that in the back,” I said. “I’m switching shotguns.
Toss me some extra magazines for this and a shit-load of those Winchester Elite’s.”

“Got it,” he replied.

“I’m going to go change out all of our radio batteries,” said Spec-4.

“Good,” I replied. “I’ll grab some MRE’s and bottled water.

“Already taken care of,” said Southard. “There are four cases of each in the back seat.”

“Outstanding,” I said.

“And, Wylie,” he added.

“Yeah, Chuck?”

“Sorry about the gate,” he said, dejectedly.

“Don’t sweat it,” I said. “If 700 had actually warned us they were opening the gate, we’d have been better prepared.”

“You’re not pissed?” he asked, surprised.

“Sure I am,” I replied, smiling. “You killed the fucking gate.
You want me to have that control box mounted so you can hang it in your room?”

Southard grinned and flipped me off, then went back to work.

“So what do we do about the gate?” he asked over his shoulder.

“We
Mad Max
it,” I replied.

“What are you talking about?” he asked, turning to face me.

“Remember in the movie
Mad Max
,” I said, “they were holed up inside that refinery. They hooked up an old school bus to the gate and drove it back and forth to work the gate.”

“Will that work?” he asked, surprised.

“I don’t see why not,” I replied. “We’ll hook one of the patrol cars to the gate. It’ll reinforce the gate plus allow us to open and close it.”

“It also means that we’ll have to send someone out to manually open it, from now on,” replied Southard.

“Well, that much is gonna have to happen no matter what we do. You killed the control motor,” said Spec-4, walking up to us.

“Yeah, I know,” he replied, angrily.

“Hey, I’m not mad about it,” said Spec-4. “You did it to save me. I’m glad you opened fire.”

That seemed to mollify Southard somewhat.
He turned around and went back to work packing the Humvee. I headed over towards the gate, loading the AA-12 on the way. Spec-4 followed me, not saying anything. I could hear numerous zombies pushing against the gate on the outside.

“What are we looking at?” asked Spec-4.

“I’m trying to figure out how to jury rig the gate,” I replied, without looking up.

Spec-4 stopped and watched me as I paced back and forth the entire length of the gate.
Then I examined the ruin of the control box. It had taken a bunch of hits and was literally ripped to shreds. It was knocked free of its mounting and lubricant was all over the ground. Only one bolt attached to its mounting bracket and the drive-chain was lying on the ground.

I reached down, grabbed the frame of the control box and pulled.
The one remaining bolt was holding fast, so I started rocking it back and forth. After a few tries, it broke free and rolled loose. Then I dragged it off to the side and out of the way. Once it was clear, I went over to one of the parked cruisers and checked the ignition. The keys were inside, just as I’d hoped.

I hopped inside and fired up the engine.
Then I backed it out of the parking space and turned it around. Spec-4 seemed to get the gist of what I was doing, and started guiding me to line up on the gate. With her help, I pulled right up next to the gate. I could only get so close, thanks to the side-mount mirror and had to pull away from the gate to adjust that. I got out and took the butt of my AA-12 and knocked the mirror completely off of the door.

With that accomplished, I moved the car right back along side the gate.
This time I got close enough to hear the metal scraping against the side of the cruiser. Once I was satisfied with the positioning of the cruiser, I killed the engine and climbed out.

“Now what, Sarge?” asked Spec-4.

“We figure out how to attach the cruiser to the gate. Any suggestions?”

“Do we have a welder?”

“Nope,” I replied, patting my pockets. “I must have left it in my other uniform.”

“Then, no, I’ve got nothing.”

“We could hook the drive chain to the front bumper,” said Southard, walking up behind us.

“That might work,” I said. “But I want it to be solid.
We need more than one anchor point or it might rip free.”

“We could use leg irons to chain the back bumper to the gate,” said Southard.

“That’s good,” I said. “That might do the trick.”

“I’ll go inside and grab all the leg irons I can find,” he replied, smiling.

He turned and jogged off towards the building, leaving Spec-4 and I alone at the gate. Well, alone with the scratching sound of a dozen or so zombies just outside. I headed over to the front bumper of the cruiser and pulled the drive chain from the gate to me. Then it was just a matter of wrapping around the frame.

I was just finishing up when Southard came trotting back up to us with several pairs of leg irons.
I took one pair from him and climbed back under the front bumper. Then I locked the gate to the frame of the cruiser as a back-up to the chain. By the time I climbed out, Southard was already on the ground doing the same thing to the rear bumper.

Once we were confident that we had the gate firmly attached to the cruiser, we turned our attention to another problem.
We needed to get the bodies of the zombies out of the intake area. Southard and I started grabbing them and dragging them over to the cruiser/gate. One at a time, we dragged them up on top of the cruiser and then tossed them over the fence.

This took us almost half an hour, but it did give me another idea.
After we’d tossed the last one over the fence, I held out my hand towards Spec-4 and pointed towards my AA-12. She nodded and tossed it to me. Then I leaned over the top of the gate and systematically eliminated the dozen zombies that were outside trying to get in.

“Like shooting ducks in a barrel,” I said, climbing down.

“Good thing we’ve got a four wheel drive,” said Southard. “There’s a pretty good sized pile of bodies outside that gate.”

“I’ve driven over worse,” I replied.

“Yeah, that’s what scares me,” said Southard, grinning.

I was about to come back with a smart-assed comment of my own when we heard an explosion.
It came from somewhere south of us. We all glanced at each other and ran for the back door of the jail.

“700, what the hell was that?” I yelled into my radio.

“We don’t have a camera on that angle,” was the reply.

“Let’s get to the roof,” said Southard, as we cleared the Release doors.

We pounded up the stairs and then headed for the maintenance access doors. 700 buzzed us through and we headed for the roof. I emerged first, with the others right on my heels. I could see a few others were already up here, including Sheriff Daniels.
Deputy
Wright was up there, too. I was going to have to resist the urge to toss her off of the roof. It was really going to take some willpower.

As we approached the edge of the building, I could see the glow of a massive fire.
Thick black smoke billowed towards the sky. All around the area, I could see zombies were turning and moving off towards the explosion. That was good news for us, but not so good for whoever started that fire.

“Jesus Christ,” said Sheriff Daniels. “What do you think caused that?”

“I don’t know, but the fireball went into the clouds,” said Koob, who had been on-duty on the roof when it happened.

“From the direction, I’d guess either the Southwest Power plant or the tank farm at the old belt plant,” I said, lowering my binoculars.

“God in Heaven,” I heard Spec-4 say.

I turned to look at what she was seeing, when I noticed it too.
Every street that we could see from up here was literally crawling with zombies. Then it hit me like a slap in the face. We were an island of life in a city of the dead. Springfield was now just another Necropolis, taking its place along-side Los Angeles, St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago and pretty much every other major city we’d heard from. It was almost enough to make you sick with despair.

I couldn’t let that happen, though.
I was more determined now than ever before to get to my family. Nothing else really mattered. I was starting to believe that this was truly the end of the world. If I was going to die, I wanted to be with my family when I did. I wanted to be with them to give them as much comfort as I could.

I scanned the area around us with the binoculars, once more.
It wouldn’t be long before the area around us was overrun with the living dead. I couldn’t count on them continuing to move south towards the explosion. Any little thing might get their attention and cause them to stop. I could handle a few dozen zombies surrounding the building, but not a few thousand. We’d never get out of here.

“We’ve got to move,” I said and started heading towards the stairs.

Southard and Spec-4 were right behind me. We hit the stairs running, and were almost to Master Control when Sheriff Daniels caught up with us.

“Where are you going?” he called from behind us.

“For my family,” I called over my shoulder. “If we don’t get out of here quick, we might not make it at all.”

“We’ll cover you,” Daniels yelled.

He started rounding up anyone who could shoot and followed us out into Release. I headed for the driver’s side door as Spec-4 dove into the passenger side. Southard slid into the backseat. I was about to fire up the engine when I heard a knock on my window. It was my friend, John Banner. He was standing there with his gear bags and a grin on his face.

“Room for one more?” he asked, opening the back door.

“Sure thing, John,” I said. “Stow your gear and get in.”

Southard helped John stash his bags in the back and then he climbed inside and shut his door.

“Do we have everything?” I asked, as I fired up the engine.

“Food, guns, ammo, water and your fuel pump gadget,” replied Southard.

“Good enough,” I said, pulling the Humvee into gear.

Half a dozen officers took up positions around us
, then locked and loaded their weapons. Matthews ran for the improvised cruiser/gate and jumped inside, flashing us a quick thumb’s up. Sheriff Daniels threw me a one finger salute and mouthed “Good luck.” The way the streets had looked from up on the roof, we were definitely going to need it. This was shaping up to be the hardest run yet, but I was going through with this no matter what. Come Hel or high water, I was going for them.

“700, how’s that gate look on the outside?” asked Southard, into his radio.

“Gate shows clear, except for the ones you shot,” replied 700.